Firings sap NOAA office responsible for licensing remote sensing satellite firms
License holders are receiving emails saying that all correspondence with the Commercial Remote Sensing for Regulatory Affairs is now being routed to the NOAA Office of General Council as no “senior personnel remain in the office,” according to communications reviewed by Breaking Defense.
Planet satellite imagery shows widespread destruction in central Kahramanmaras, Turkey following the devastating 2023 earthquake. (Image courtesy of Planet Labs PBC.)
WASHINGTON — Mass firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have resulted in what is essentially a shut down of the unit responsible for licensing US remote sensing satellites, according to multiple sources, with license holders receiving emails notifying them all correspondence would now be handled by NOAA’s Office of General Counsel.
“This is a temporary arrangement to address continuity of operations as no senior personnel remain in the office due to reductions in force,” reads a copy of the email from the Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA) division seen by Breaking Defense. “CRSRA is unable to state when this arrangement might end.”
CRSRA is the division within NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce responsible for regulating space-based commercial remote sensing, including work involving companies such as Planet, Maxar and BlackSky that provide imagery to the National Reconnaissance Office for use by the Defense Department for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance purposes. NOAA, in turn, is under the Department of Commerce.
“The email is correct, the Office of General Counsel will be supporting the continuity of license applications and processing for companies involved in the process,” a spokesperson for the Office of Space Commerce told Breaking Defense in an email.
While it is too soon to judge the impact of the situation, if extenuated the likely outcome would be a slow down in the approval of new licenses for aspiring satellite imagery firms and of any pending license modification requests from current operators.
The Trump administration began firings Thursday at NOAA, with some 800 personnel out of a total staff of some 13,000 terminated, the New York Times reported today. Among those was the head of CRSRA Sarah Brothers, sources who deal with CRSRA told Breaking Defense.
“Per our long-standing practice, we do not discuss internal personnel and management matters. NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience,” the Office of Space Commerce spokesperson said.
NOAA operates US weather satellites also used by the military, and has been central to research on climate change.
In addition, the Office of Space Commerce sent out a notice today that it has cancelled a planned March 5 meeting of the NOAA Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space (ACES). The industry group has been active in helping the Office of Space Commerce on a number of key issues, including how to best provide oversight and management of on-orbit activities that fall between the cracks of current federal regulatory regimes.
The notice, also reviewed by Breaking Defense, does not indicate whether the planned meeting would be rescheduled. However, the space-focused news outlet Payload today reported that ACES has been swept up in the cull of advisory committees mandated in a Feb. 19 Trump administration executive order seeking to slash the federal bureaucracy.
Further, the head of the Office of Space Commerce’s program to create a civil space traffic management regime designed to take the burden of warning non-military satellite operators of potential on-orbit crashes off DoD’s shoulders, Dmitry Poisik, also has been fired, the same sources told Breaking Defense.
Poisik was hired in July 2024 as the first director of the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCCS) program, and thus fell under the Office of Personnel Management’s order for termination of all federal agency “probationary” employees. In most federal agencies, personnel who have yet to complete one full year in their job are given “probationary” status.
Nonetheless, work under the TraCCS program appears to be continuing, with the Office of Space Commerce today issuing a call for industry comment on its proposal for a new “pathfinder” project. “The pathfinder would investigate commercially available capabilities for the identification and cataloging of space objects immediately after their launch and deployment,” the notice explains.
